You could make a judgment call and go with option one or two, or if you're truly unsure, I see no issue with scrapping the whole thing and starting over. Short of making the call when you're not sure, what's the alternative? As I pointed out, there are in fact rules governing this and you should up...

There isn't an infinite supply of extra questions that you have the luxury to throw a question out whenever you're faced with the protest, rather than to actually sit down with the rules and deal with the protest fairly. Certainly, but how often does this kind of issue come up? Once a tournament? O...

You could make a judgment call and go with option one or two, or if you're truly unsure, I see no issue with scrapping the whole thing and starting over. Short of making the call when you're not sure, what's the alternative? As I pointed out, there are in fact rules governing this and you should up...

It really depends on the specifics. Whenever "Invisible Man" (or other notable confusing titles such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream") is involved I make sure to pay extra attention so this is never an issue. However, in cases where it is, I see three realistic outcomes. One: You remain confident that...

The issue, as always, is how closely a distribution should adhere to a curriculum. But if we want the two to at least be kinda-sorta friends, perhaps it would be advantageous to compile a sort of cross-section of curricula from across the nation. For example, my high school did have sociology, forei...

Snell's Law: zero powers and nine 10s in the 42 rooms that heard it on IS #63A. I think its worth noting that 33 of these rooms were at one "tournament." On that note, I urge anyone running NAQT tournaments to please, please send NAQT your scoresheets so that the most accurate conversion data can b...

Any fears about any of this having the slightest impact on real world operations are completely overblown. At least not until HSAPQ collapses because Trygve sold its trade secrets to competitors and/or Japan. "Pyramidal questions? Why did we never think of that?!" There's definitely an I.M. Pei jok...

As long as we're posting from syllabuses, from RIT's course catalog: History of Baseball -Fall Quarter Dr. Rebecca Edwards It has been said that the history of baseball is the history of the United States. Perhaps. At least, it is one possible way of organizing the story of American history. This s...

IS 94 had a tossup asking to identify a UFC fighter, which, while I realize it goes back to the lack of a pop culture canon debate, I thought was a particularly bad idea. I wrote this tossup. Any particular reason you think this was a "particularly bad idea"? Who was the fighter in question? Tito O...

2. Move NAQT State to after IHSA State. One potential downside to this is less participation from non-nationals caliber teams because the current setup does promote shutting down in mid-March; however, once a few more tournaments join the April calendar, this will be less of a psychological issue. ...

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:A state that hasn't produced an NSC top bracket team since 2007 being considered underrated when they often get a few teams onto each top 25 ranking, and in a supposed down year they get slightly fewer? Seriously?

I think foreign names should get a little bit of leeway in pronunciation. Aside from that, phonetically correct should be acceptable. Even if you think some kid is dumb for pronouncing Berlioz BURLYOZZ or even if you think he/she is doing it on purpose, it still has to be acceptable since it still ...

People moderate more than one match, and my guess is that the 20/10 moderator would have a few matches where s/he did not reach 20. 20/10, as Charlie pointed out, is a bit of a straw man (although it's not out of the realm of possibility), but my point still remains that I would use "failure to rea...

Either can (and actually maybe should) be pronounced the same as the other. In fact, I wouldn't be too shocked if there are some English translations of Zhivago that render the character's name as Laura. At any rate, any reasonable pronunciation of Laura should be accepted as a reasonable attempt a...

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Yo BJ, I was responding to Samer's very silly hypothetical example, which I don't see as at all worth discussing, not the general idea that we should talk about fixing moderator quality.

The only useful purpose of this statistic is to figure out which moderators should not have been moderating at a national tournament. To figure that out, you figure out who moderated for more than one match that did not get through at least 18 tossups and don't invite them back. The ones that misse...

What about the replacement of "Lara" with "Laura" where the error leads to a noticeably different answer? Ah, I recognize this one. It was the finals of the Norcross Prison Bowl Mirror, and the question was asking about the lover of Dr. Zhivago. I am interested to see what other people think about ...

It has come to my attention that NAQT has a rule allowing players to be prompted on partial last names. I want to make it known that I think this is a bad rule and would like to advocate it be removed. The specific incident I know of is that the team I work with said just Strauss on the Levi-Straus...

What about this scenario: "William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude wh...

What about this scenario: "William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude wh...

I think it's okay because the important point of the answer (Faulkner) is clearly stated. I would regard the saying of the title (any title, even a non Faulkner title) as embellishment of the answer which has no bearing on it. However, this is somewhat of a more liberal interpretation of the rules....

Uh, finishing the packet is nice, but the goal of a good moderator in NAQT should be to hit 20 tossups, and then the rest is gravy. Gotta disagree here. If we're doing 9 minute halves, I feel just awful about it if I don't get through 24. 20 of 24 or 26 leaves a lot on the table. Then why is untime...

I would support CULT over RC Cola 1,000%. Difficulty doesn't really matter here - we're talking Mike Bentley trash vs. Steinhice trash. There's no comparison. Because we should be doing an academic set primarily over a trash set side event, skipping those few rounds of CULT wouldn't be a problem at...

Is this 100% attached to RC COLA? CULT is now open for mirror opportunities. Charles Martin and I have both playtested multiple rounds of CULT, so if we were to play you would have to skip those rounds. Also, CULT might be a little too hard for this field, though RC Cola is also no walk in the park...

I apologize, when I stay up too late I forget that frogs jump and not leap . But the issue of question difficulty did originate out of the Rock and Roll issue, since my main objection to R&R as Fine Arts was that it seemed to me to simply be an effort to allow weak teams a way to answer a question ...

[*]Math C: ... topology* ... What kind of topics are being covered in topology? Topology is not normally covered in high school, even at advanced levels. We have no idea, but I can guarantee it will be a disaster. Generally the idea of an open or closed set is covered in high school, and that's par...